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Azure OpenAI vs IBM Watson Machine Learning comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 4, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Azure OpenAI
Ranking in AI Development Platforms
1st
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
34
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
IBM Watson Machine Learning
Ranking in AI Development Platforms
14th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the AI Development Platforms category, the mindshare of Azure OpenAI is 11.0%, down from 20.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Watson Machine Learning is 1.8%, down from 2.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
AI Development Platforms
 

Featured Reviews

Rafael Keller - PeerSpot reviewer
Creates effective scheduling agents with responsive AI capabilities
I am using it to create agents to schedule appointments for clinics and professionals in general. It serves both small and major companies. The primary use case involves creating agents Its ability to understand and respond well to queries, including language translation for clients, is…
Anurag Mayank - PeerSpot reviewer
A highly efficient solution that delivers the desired results to its users
I had not considered how the solution could be improved because I was focused on how it was helping me to solve my issues. If I consider how we want to use it in our organization, certain areas of improvement can be addressed. For instance, we want to use it with Generative AI, not like ChatGPT, but in a way intended for industrial use. It would be beneficial to incorporate more AI into the solution.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The high precision of information extraction is the most valuable feature."
"The most crucial aspect is the conversational capability, where you can simply ask questions, and it provides answers based on your content and documents, particularly tailored to your specific environment."
"We have many use cases for the solution, such as digitalizing records, a chatbot looking at records, and being able to use generative AI on them."
"Azure OpenAI is useful for benchmarking products."
"Azure OpenAI is very easy to use instead of AWS services."
"Its versatility makes it incredibly useful for technical problem-solving, content creation, data analytics, and more."
"My goal was to create an experience where project managers don't have to read through entire documents. Instead, they can ask a question and receive relevant point analysis. This analysis identifies the document and specific section where the information resides. Previously, users had to rely on these document references. Now, Azure OpenAI enhances the experience by providing the answer directly in the user's own language, relevant to their context."
"The most valuable features include analyzing comments and preparing requests for customers, making emails easier and faster."
"It has improved self-service and customer satisfaction."
"We can enable and change developer productivity with artificial intelligence-recommended code based on natural language input or exciting source code."
"It is has a lot of good features and we find the image classification very useful."
"The most valuable aspect of the solution's the cost and human labor savings."
"I was particularly interested in trying the AutoML feature to see how it handles data and proposes new models. The variety of models it provides is impressive."
"Scalability-wise, I rate the solution ten out of ten."
"The solution is very valuable to our organization due to the fact that we can work on it as a workflow."
 

Cons

"The dialogue manager needs to be improved."
"The solution's response is a bit slow sometimes."
"Azure OpenAI should use more specific sources like academic articles because sometimes the source can't be found."
"Maybe with the next release, the response will be more precise and more human-like."
"There are no available updates of information that are currently provided."
"Deployment was slightly complex for me to understand."
"Azure OpenAI will be expensive if you want to implement it as a permanent solution for a customer."
"The product features themselves are fine. However, with Microsoft scaling the service so much, the support structure needs to keep pace. When solving complex issues, the process of interacting with Microsoft can be quite time-consuming."
"If I consider how we want to use it in our organization, certain areas of improvement can be addressed. For instance, we want to use it with Generative AI, not like ChatGPT, but in a way intended for industrial use."
"They should add more GPU processing power to improve performance, especially when dealing with large amounts of data."
"Sometimes training the model is difficult."
"Honestly, I haven't seen any comparative report that has run the same data through two different artificial intelligence or machine learning capabilities to get something out of it. I would love to see that."
"The supporting language is limited."
"Scaling is limited in some use cases. They need to make it easier to expand in all aspects."
"In future releases, I would like to see a more flexible environment."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I rate the product pricing six out of ten."
"It's a token-based system, so you pay per token used by the model."
"We started with monthly payments, but we plan to switch to yearly billing once we've stabilized our solution."
"I'm uncertain about the licensing, specifically the pricing. This falls under the purview of other teams, particularly the sales teams. I am not informed about the pricing details."
"While the product meets our business requirements well, I consider it relatively expensive, especially for individual users like myself."
"The solution's pricing depends on the services you will deploy."
"Regarding pricing and licensing, it's a bit complex due to the minimum purchase requirement for PTO units. We're evaluating the best approach between PTE and pay-as-you-go models. Our organization is cautious about committing to PTE due to the fixed bandwidth reservation, while pay-as-you-go doesn't offer enough flexibility. We're discussing these matters with legal teams to ensure compliance and data security."
"The cost structure depends on the volume of data processed and the computational resources required."
"The pricing model is good."
"I've only been using the free tier, but it's quite competitive on a service basis."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Educational Organization
6%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
11%
University
10%
Educational Organization
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Azure OpenAI?
The product is easy to integrate with our IT workflow.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Azure OpenAI?
In the past, the primary expense involved token limitations which constrained scaling. Recent iterations have increased token allowances, mitigating some challenges associated with concurrent user ...
What needs improvement with Azure OpenAI?
Azure ( /products/microsoft-azure-reviews ) could significantly benefit from including more LLM models apart from OpenAI, as I often need to switch clouds when a model doesn't meet my requirements....
What do you like most about IBM Watson Machine Learning?
I was particularly interested in trying the AutoML feature to see how it handles data and proposes new models. The variety of models it provides is impressive.
What needs improvement with IBM Watson Machine Learning?
Sometimes training the model is difficult. We need to have at least a few different components to evaluate and understand the behavior of different users to have a very, very high accuracy in the m...
 

Overview

Find out what your peers are saying about Azure OpenAI vs. IBM Watson Machine Learning and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
860,168 professionals have used our research since 2012.